Completing Ascendancies Should Not be a Despised Experience

I recall mention that once Acts 4~6 are released, there'll be one more trial of ascendancy. Given how the current two function for earning ascendancy, I believe the intent is that your first 6 points require you to scrape by just the first milestone of each ascendancy. Then the last 2 points require you to pick one of those trials and do all 4 milestones. If that's an accurate read, then it's a somewhat defendable framework provided things are balanced carefully.

It's not hard for any character to do floor 1 of Trial of Sekhemas - even melee can do fine if they bring a shield to hotswap to. Floor 1 mobs attack in slow motion and eventually you'll build up relics to make it easier to clear the boss. Similarly, Trial of Chaos is RNG and Uxmal (the chimera) has terrible AI for melee characters but is tolerable for one boss clear. Whatever the third trial will be should aspire to similar easiness for the first boss clear.

As for needing to devote so much to get the last 2 points... there was a time in PoE 1 when you'd need to run T6+ maps a lot to find all 6 checkpoints to even be allowed to enter lab. So the concept of needing to wait until T11-ish maps before having the gear/build to do it doesn't seem too alien. Balance will make or break this system but the framework itself isn't inherently flawed.

Yes but the lab, even at it's most punishing, was doable by the average build at lvl 75-80 which is tier 10-11 maps usually.

This would be reasonable.

This is not the case in PoE2. The average build cannot do fourth ascendancy even at level 90.

"

fouquet#0993 wrote:

Yes but the lab, even at it's most punishing, was doable by the average build at lvl 75-80 which is tier 10-11 maps usually.

This would be reasonable.

This is not the case in PoE2. The average build cannot do fourth ascendancy even at level 90.

Hence my point that balance will make or break the current framework. The idea that you pick one of three (on release) trials and make your build good against that one trial is by itself defensible if balanced. As in, the average builds would have some trial they can reasonably do at around the point they're doing tier 8~11 maps comfortably.

Hey guys, OP here:

Wow! I never imagined I'd get so many replies. Seems I wasn't so off-base as I thought.
I just posted expecting maybe 2 or 3 "git gud" zingers, but you all contributed quite poignantly.

Thoughts:

1) The vast majority seem to agree that both trials are either tedious, unrewarding, or simply too difficult, most build being practically walled from ever having 8 full Ascendancy points achievable.

Issue: This pigeon-holes players into simply following what's "meta", with little to no wiggle room, leading to little build variety, also encouraging players to seek bugs/exploits

Solution(?): Make Trials more forgiving, in terms of affliction occurrence rate and magnitude. Final Bosses in each respective trial should (preferably) have 10% less HP and deal 10% damage, at a minimum and/or have the option to repeat the encounter once (the cost of entry and time investment is frustrating enough as it is).
Alternatively, there should be proximity scaling, so melee builds aren't obliterated by default.

2) Some people in this tread say they actually ENJOY running the trials, so the issue doesn't seem to be the mechanics themselves, despite what my initial impression was. No solution to suggest here. If you're having fun running trials, have at it, but having all 8 ascendancy points needs to be a palpable, realistically achievable goal for every class.


I'm curious to see what other people think.

That said: Thank you again to everyone for all their feedback so far! May your trials be straightforward and crash-free!

I think they should implement a more transparent system for carries, where players can put the orbs in escrow until the carrier completes the trial. That would be good for business.

"

The vast majority seem to agree that both trials are either tedious, unrewarding, or simply too difficult, most build being practically walled from ever having 8 full Ascendancy points achievable

Oh well if it's the vast majority then. Guess there's no point for some positiv feedback if you just choose to ignore them. :D

"

BigBeuss#5956 wrote:

"

The vast majority seem to agree that both trials are either tedious, unrewarding, or simply too difficult, most build being practically walled from ever having 8 full Ascendancy points achievable

Oh well if it's the vast majority then. Guess there's no point for some positiv feedback if you just choose to ignore them. :D

Sorry, I don't quite understand your post.

Could you please elaborate?

Just came here to say they suck.
Total dogshit.

No idea whats in the room next
No idea what the reward or penalties will be.
Just did full on Russian roulette , taking random afflictions
just clicking empty buttons to progress to unknown trials for mystery afflictions.

glad its a skill trial
what a load of crap

Quick Fix: Take honor out of boss fights. Give 5 choices instead of 3 in trials.

Long Fix: After quick fix is implemented, work on a new system that has ascendency specific challenges(or at least class-specific). When finished, leave in these two terrible methods for folks to farm if they prefer(buff rewards, imo).

lets see your relic loadout first before any further discussion